The success of the Japanese automobile industry has mystified Western scholars for many decades. In the early post-war years, the industry did not receive any blessings from the Bank of Japan. Even MITI was a little pessimistic about the industry’s future. The inclusion of the automobile components industry as part of MITI’s “pick-the-winner” industrial policy appeared almost as an afterthought. Yet against all odds the industry flourished to become one of Japan’s best known success stories. Western scholars and business strategists alike are naturally keen to deconstruct this mystery, while Japanese scholars were no less enthusiastic in documenting and offering an explanation. Many explored the keiretsu structure (networking or supplier relationship) as a possible source of the industry’s competitive advantage. Something has gone amiss however, in this parallel effort, and gaps and misperceptions developed. This paper explores some of the myths surrounding this industry. In the process, it revaluates MITI’s policy and raised another research question of whether some of Toyota’s domestic competitors might have misinterpreted the nature of Toyota’s keiretsu.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
8112.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior N15 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations - - - Asia including Middle East L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Yoshiro Miwa & J. Mark Ramseyer, 2001.
"The Fable of the Keiretsu,"
CIRJE F-Series
CIRJE-F-109, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
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